Category: Forensic Toxicology
Prenatal THC and Primate Muscle Research: Gene Changes Are Not a Clinical Diagnosis
A pilot study found altered gene expression in muscle from THC-exposed primate offspring, with relatively narrow overall developmental effects. Its findings warrant further research, but they do not establish a diagnosed muscle disorder in human children or a method for attributing an individual child’s condition to cannabis. The exposure and…
THC, Hippocampal Receptors and Memory: What a Rat Maze Can Tell an Expert
A rat experiment can identify a mechanism of THC-related memory disruption without establishing how impaired a particular human was. Wise and colleagues used targeted receptor blockade to separate a memory effect from other cannabinoid effects, an important distinction when broad claims about “impairment” are offered. The question the experiment answered…
Can Vehicle Sensors Detect Cannabis Impairment? What the REVELIO Protocol Actually Shows
A published study protocol describes a planned test; it does not establish that the proposed detector works. The REVELIO protocol is useful for understanding how researchers intend to compare cannabis exposure, driver function, and vehicle signals, but it contains no completed diagnostic-accuracy results. What the investigators planned Deuber and colleagues…
THC-Positive Trauma Patients: Why Injury Severity Is Not a Crash-Risk Estimate
A study of injured people cannot, by itself, tell us how often cannabis users crash compared with drivers who do not use cannabis. The distinction between injury severity after a crash and the risk of having a crash is essential when interpreting trauma-registry research. The population the researchers selected Borst…
Youth Cannabis Research: What Hair Testing Adds—and What It Cannot Establish
Combining toxicology with self-report can improve research exposure classification without proving the cause of a particular child’s cognitive difficulties. A large longitudinal study illustrates both the value and the limitations of that approach. Following development over time Wade and colleagues analyzed the ABCD cohort to examine neurocognitive trajectories around cannabis…
Cannabis and Spatial Working Memory: Why Other Memory Tests May Be Normal
A cannabis study can find a deficit on one memory task while finding no significant differences on others. That does not establish either global cognitive failure or complete preservation of function. The task and research design determine what the result means. A selective finding in human participants Ryder and colleagues…
Cannabis and Blood-Cell Gene Expression: What an mRNA Finding Does Not Prove
A change in gene expression in blood lymphocytes is not a diagnosis of brain injury, psychosis, or driving impairment. A small controlled cannabis study demonstrates why a biological response must remain connected to its actual tissue and measured endpoint. The experiment and specimen Smith and colleagues examined a 24-person subset…
High Serum THC in a Tourette Case: Why One Report Cannot Set a Driving Rule
A case report describing satisfactory psychometric performance despite high serum THC challenges a simple concentration-only explanation, but it does not establish a safe THC concentration. Its value depends on preserving the patient’s unusual clinical circumstances and the limits of the testing. What the report described Streetz and colleagues assessed a…
Hemp Extract, Positive Urine Screening and Unquantifiable Plasma THC
A positive urine cannabis screen and an unquantifiable plasma THC result can occur together without the cause of the disagreement being established. An exploratory hemp-extract study shows why neither result should be rewritten to make the evidence appear more consistent than it is. Two routes and two kinds of evidence…
Does a Five-Minute Urine Cannabis Assay Measure Impairment?
Speed and analytical accuracy do not turn a urine cannabis screen into an impairment test. A portable microfluidic assay can improve specimen screening while leaving the central forensic question—what the person could do at the relevant time—unanswered. What the new platform measured Ko and colleagues developed a fluorescence-based microfluidic system…
When a THC Hair Screen Is Positive but Confirmation Is Negative
A positive THC hair screen requires scrutiny when the assay fails to distinguish confirmed positive and negative specimens. A 2026 evaluation of the SAMElife screening kit illustrates why performance for other drugs cannot be transferred automatically to the cannabinoid component. What was tested Martini and colleagues evaluated 31 anonymized hair…
Can a Rapid Blood Screen Distinguish Delta-8 THC, Delta-9 THC and HHC?
A high-resolution mass spectrometer does not automatically distinguish every cannabinoid isomer. In a validated whole-blood screening method, some closely related cannabinoids remained incompletely separated. That limitation matters whenever an expert assigns a specific compound name to a screening signal. What the method established Schirmer and colleagues expanded an LC–QTOF–MS method…
